A well-established writer more known for his humorous travelogues and a first-time author's humane book about mutants and monsters feature in the shortlist for this year's Aventis prize for science writing.

From Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, a straight-talking, everyman's introduction to the secrets of the universe, to Armand Marie Leroi's Mutants and Andrew Brown's In the Beginning Was the Worm, a book which celebrates the humble nematode worm, the six books explore a wide spectrum of scientific endeavour.

The shortlist was plucked from a longlist of 15, which had been whittled down from 106 entries, up almost 20% on the previous year.

Chair of the judging panel, Professor Robert Winston, said that the judges had been particularly pleased by the broad coverage of the entries and the fact that the shortlist included famous as well as debut authors.

The winner of the Aventis prize gets a cheque for £10,000, but none of the shortlisted authors will go home empty-handed: each one gets £1,000. The prize will be awarded at the Royal Society in London on June 14.

Last year, Chris McManus's Right Hand, Left Hand scooped the prize from favourite Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate. Other winners in the prize's 16-year history include Stephen Hawking for The Universe in a Nutshell, Brian Greene for The Elegant Universe, Steve Jones for The Language of the Genes and Roger Penrose for The Emperor's New Mind.

This year's shortlisted books

In the Beginning Was the Worm by Andrew Brown The book maps the scientific elevation of a hitherto lowly organism - Caenorhabditis elegans, otherwise known as the nematode worm - which eventually led to the human genome project. This tiny brainless organism, less than a millimetre long, was chosen by Sidney Brenner in 1965 as a suitable subject on which to investigate the secrets of life. It was some 30 or so years before its DNA was successfully mapped in 1998. The book provides a biological history and documents the work of the scientists who struggled to decode its DNA. Brown also speculates on the next stage in what has become known as the Worm Project.www.thewormbook.com

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson The bestselling American humorist documents his latest journey, which takes an unexpectedly ambitious direction - through space and time - to uncover the secrets of the universe. He brings his own inimitable style to the science genre and attempts, through humour and straight talking, to make subjects such as geology and particle physics accessible to the scientifically sceptical. In his words, he only wants to know "...how we went from there, being nothing at all to there, being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us, and also what happened in between and since." www.randomhouse.com/features/billbryson/home.html

Mutants by Armand Marie Leroi This debut effort asks what new molecular genetics tell us about the human condition, and crucially, what happens when things go wrong. The book, in a kind of humane freak-show style, contains illustrations of ancient engravings and stories of physical mutations, using our ancestral past to explore the science of 'monsters' in contemporary society. But the evolutionary biologist shows that we all have our own form of mutations - unseen, perhaps, but ever present in our insides.www.armandleroi.com

Nature via Nurture by Matt Ridley This is a substantial contribution to the ongoing debate on what makes us who we are. Since the discovery that the genome contains only a third of the number of genes that we thought it did, several experts have been arguing that nurture must then account for the many different types of human behaviour and personality traits. Ridley's book asserts that genes and environment mutually interact, so the truth is far more complex and exciting.www.mattridley.net

Magic Universe by Nigel Calder Drawing on an accumulated knowledge and experience of the subject, and utilising interviews with over 200 researchers, Calder confronts the breadth of discovery, from Pythagoras's theory of musical pitch to the science behind migration. Undaunted by the immensity of his project, he illuminates how the modern sciences intermingle, finding connections between different scientific disciplines and highlighting and explaining the latest discoveries.

Backroom Boys by Francis Spufford This surveys British technological endeavours since 1945, taking in the early rocket scientists, the development of Concorde and more recently, the voyage of the ill-fated Beagle 2. Spufford writes with humour and enthusiasm of the very British boffin - the classic type who belonged to the British Interplanetary Society - and his (it was almost invariably a he) modern-day equivalent. While he demonstrates a real affection and knowledge of the nation's past achievements, he is equally at ease discussing computer games, mobile phone technology and the future of invention in Britain.